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Battle of the Misty Mountains
'''The Battle of the Misty Mountains '''was a major battle between the Dwarves and the Goblins in the Mortality Crusades that eventually led to Dwarf and Elven war. It occurred in the year 1585 of the Second Age, when a host led by the legendary Dwarf chieftain Bane IV Chainbiter, along with a smaller host of Elves, were patrolling the Misty Mountains to visit the Kingdom of Erebor and establish a stronghold there for the inevitable war against the Goblins. They were waylaid when ambushed by a horde of Goblins led by Vaglok the Barbarian. This led to a brutal battle that spanned five days. Prelude When a batallion of Dwarves visited Rivendell that year, they were hospitalized by the Elves that lived there. There, they explained that they were on their way to visit the Lonely Mountain of Erebor, because they were expecting open war against the Goblins of Mordor. The Lord Elrond offered them a host of Elves to aid them on their journey. They journeyed through to the Misty Mountains, inevitably the quickest path through to Erebor at that point. When they entered the Mountains, they were delayed when a group of Stone Giants battling blocked their path, and they had to make camp in a nearby cave. However, whilst they slept, they were ambushed by a legion of Goblins. Bane IV Chainbiter - so named because he escaped an Orc prison by gnawing through his chains with his teeth every day until they rotted and rusted and he was free - ordered to be given an explanation for this untimely interruption, to which the Great Goblin - a fat and lazy liability, even for such a species - summoned his second-in-command, Vaglok the Barbarian, a vicious and ruthless Goblin Lord of the Misty Mountains. Vaglok announced that they were illegally trespassing on their territory, for which they would all be executed. At this point, though, the Elves had eluded the Goblins and taken positions secretly throughout the Goblin establishment - the vast maze of platforms, bridges, slides and houses that was the Goblin Town. Mid-conversation, the Goblins' trial of the Dwarves, which would almost certainly end in mass execution, was interrupted when the Elven Captain - none other than Thranduil himself - fired an arrow into the throat of the Great Goblin, incapacitating him. The Goblins erupted into violence and attacked the elves, giving the Dwarves time to gather and attack. Battle The Brawl of Goblin Town And so began the Battle of the Misty Mountains. Bane Chainbiter, tall and strong, stood and drew his great flail and bore down on the Goblin Host. His soldiers charged on the Goblins whilst they were distracted, and the Goblin warriors were joined by their workforce and their squires and servants, all of them piled on to battle the Dwarves. Vaglok carried the Great Goblin on his own back, to the safety of a secret hideout in the very heart of the Mountains. The Great Goblin - his entire body toughened and protected abnormally by a wall of fat and muscle - had only been seriously injured by the arrow, but not killed. Goblins of his stature were, after all, extremely hard to kill. Vaglok was commanded by the Great Goblin to destroy the Dwarves and Elves who had polluted his home. Incorrectly seeing this as the dying wish of his master, Vaglok picked up his shield in one hand and his warhammer in the other, before turning to lead his kin against the intruders of his home. The Dwarves and the Goblins were warring destructively by the time Vaglok arrived, and they were swarming all over the Town, tipping over brdiges, smashing homes, infesting every nook and cranny of the Town. Fearing that the intruders would defile his master's 'resting place', Vaglok struck the wall of stone that stood above the hiding place of the Great Goblin with his warhammer, sending chunks of stone falling on the entrance and trapping his master inside. The Elves had been discovered by Goblin sentries, who had screamed cries of warning to the citadel that sat atop the colony. In there, where Wargs were bred and fed on prisoners who had crossed their paths in years before. The Warg-riders were alerted by the cries of their kin, and immediately took their mounts nad charged into the fray. The snarls and growls of the incoming Wargs terrified the Dwarves, who fell back on their positions, giving ground to the enemy. The Elves tried to retake positions, but had found competition when the Wargs coursed up to their perches and drove them back. Thranduil was brought down from his position by a Warg, but killed the rider and mounted the Warg for himself, charging down to aid his people against the Goblins. In the very midst of the Battle, Bane IV Chainbiter was ablaze with violence, his great flail whirling and smashing skulls and shields of any Goblin who dared come near him. He was going straight for Vaglok, who was viciously beating through Dwarves and even Goblins if they got too close. With great cries of rage, the two warlords charged and led their armies into a second bout of the skirmish, but were separated from one another by the whirling, swarming bloodbath that followed. Then Wargs leapt up from secret perches, only for many to be brought down by Elven archers. Finally, the two warriors met in the middle of the battleground, on either side of a bridge. They faced each other, panting and heaving. Vaglok charged first, and Bane charged after him. The two of them swung their weapons so hard towards each other that the sound that followed ripped into their ears and almost drove them deeply mad. Bane faltered, partially deaf and confused, and Vaglok tackled into him, knocking both of them over the edge of the bridge and out of sight. Vaglok's captains saw him fall, and Bane's captains saw him do also, and both of them cried out, thinking their leaders were to die in the unseen chasm beneath them. All that the armies saw of either of them for a long time was Vaglok and Bane wrapped together, tangled in limbs that writhed and lashed, as if locked in a violent, brutal embrace, before they vanished into the abyss below. The Duel in the Caves Even when they crashed into each other, they continued fighting. Twisting and turning, blind and baffled by the speed and velocity of their fall, the two of them could do nothing but lash at each other furiously, desperate to be sure that they were the ones to survive the landing, whatever it may be. Vaglok bit at his enemy's face and Bane beat at the Goblin's body, desperately fishing for his dropped Mace. Bane's back crashed into a sloped wall and they slid down it, only to meet a waterfall and continue falling through the frothing mass of cold, icy water. They finally struck the end of their fall: a massive pool of water colder and more merciless than the meanest ice. When they crashed, they were overwhelmed and blackened out by the cold of the water, before realizing where they were and swimming after each other to find shore. In a brutal chase, they tore at each other like children playing in a stream. Vaglok found his warhammer and Bane his mace, and when they found surface, they collapsed upon it together, coughing and rasping. Then they rose to their feet, hate burning in them with unspeakable intensity. Maddened by the dizziness the fall had caused him, Bane attacked, driving his opponent back with rage-filled swings of his mace, shattering stone structures and gauging the floor beneath him. Vaglok retreated into a narrow tunnel, where began the most vicious duel either of them had ever fought. The duel spanned for three days, and Vaglok quickly claimed the advantage, having been in the darkness and gloom far longer than Bane could ever hope to be. He bashed at his opponent's huge torso, only to be blocked and redirected by strikes which could only be performed by skill and confidence. The duel progressed through thin, steep caverns, only to open up into a great river that ran deep through the Misty Mountains. Entering the water, which was colder even than the pool they fell into, Bane stumbled and Vaglok kicked him down and tried to smash his skull then and there. Vaglok missed and fell forwards, only for Bane to rise and swing his mace down with such great force that, when Vaglok dodged and the block of the mace struck the ground, it splintered into several pieces, now only a chain attached to a metal tube. Enraged, Bane battered at his opponent, driving him down the river that they could see no end to. Vaglok, though, speedily gained the upper hand with his bigger and unspoiled weapon, and badly injured Bane by breaking the hammer against his knee. Buckled and in agony, Bane retreated behind the trenches of stone stalagmites that sat in the caves he next saw. Sneering with triumph, Vaglok chased him, his sanity shattered by a maddened sense of superiority and victory. He pursued the great Dwarf through the caves, until they came to a staircase that Vaglok chased him to the peak of one of the Mountains. There, the tunnel ended in a vast, mist-shrouded drop that didn't seem to have an end. Bane grabbed the edge of the tunnel to stop himself from falling and Vaglok cornered him. Laughing, the Goblin approached, brandishing his hammer. Driven mad by despair and intense pain, Bane threw himself at his victorious enemy, his hands going stragiht for the Goblin's throat. The Goblin dropped his hammer and the two of them rolled down the steps, clawing at each other as they dropped into a river and were pulled powerfully down into the very pits that were used by the Goblins as baths. There, Bane heard the screams and cries of his people as they battled for his life. With one final effort, he drove a great fist into the Goblin's cheekbone, snapping his head back and killing him with one furious blow. The Battle Reaches its Peak Bane, weakened and tired beyond counting by his fight with the Goblin, collapsed. There, he was found by none other than Beorn himself, in bear form. Beorn, no fonder of Dwarves than he was of Goblins, took pity on the weak warrior. Picking him up, the Skin-changer carried him away from the Battle, to the safety of the Eyrie, where he lay out one whole day of the Battle to heal. Meanwhile, Thranduil had taken command of the Dwarves and was chargin the Goblins to the edges of the mountains, right out into the open. Many Dwarves and many Elves had fallen, but Thranduil had barely noticed. He had been focused on fighting the Goblins, and would come to despair at the Elves who had been lost in that fateful clash. However, he charged the Goblins and, for a number of hours, the Dwarves and the Goblins remained equally matched in their brutal cacophony of clashes and screams. They couldn't drive the other in and out of the mountains, without sacrificing the advantage. The Goblins, leaderless in every way, were driven by blind desire to kill the Dwarves and the Elves, but Thranduil led with talent and precision that could only come of a true-born leader. Precisely after one day of healing, with no warning nor premonition as to why or how, Bane returned to the Battle on the back of Beorn himself. With a roar of fury, carrying a great tree trunk in one hand, Bane bore down on the Goblins with a scream. The Goblins, shocked and rattled by this bizarre newcomer, panicked and ran for the hills. The Elves circled the fields and trees, cutting off their escape. Beorn smashed into the ranks, scattering the Goblins. Triumph in their eyes, the Dwarves sprinted into battle once more, with the resplendent Thranduil at their head. The Goblins didn't stand a chance. They were cut to pieces, all but five hundred of them, who were clever enough to leave the fight before Beorn arrived and find refuge. The Wargs were butchered, even Thranduil himself as thrown from his mount, which was stabbed repeatedly by maddened Goblins. By nightfall, the Battle of the Misty Mountains was over. Aftermath So many Dwarves and Elves had lost their lives that day that many could barely see this as a victory. Many soldiers, though, proudly remember how Bane was carried off his mounted bear, which turned and silently charged back into the woods without an explanation, and Bane recalled how he defeated the Goblin captain himself. However, Thranduil, who was now faced with the full punch of how many Elves he had lost, confronted him in the middle of his great victory. He challenged that, while Bane was busy falling, so many immortal beings had lost their chances to live out their lives on the Earth. Bane returned with a furious declaration that Thranduil ought to hold his tongue or lose it, as he was talking to the victor of the Battle. Proud and insolent to an extreme, Thranduil snarled at Bane himself, declaring himself the victor of the Battle who had managed to stay in the fray the whole time without failing his troops. He declared that this was not the last that Bane had heard of Thranduil. With that, he took the surviving Elves and left the Mountains for Mirkwood. Bane watched him go, but then turned and forgot all about him. That night, back in Moria, they drank and laughed, not knowing of the enemy they had made of the Goblins that day...or the enemy they had made of King Thranduil, either. Category:Battles Category:Historical events Category:The Mortality Crusades